WARNING: IF YOU ARE A KID, STOP READING THIS NOW!

Did you stop? No? Don’t you obey adults?

STOP!! SHUT OFF THIS SCREEN!

OK, now that the kids have cleared the room, I can speak freely.

There are several culturally sanctioned lies we tell our children. Y’know, things that are clearly made-up and not true. Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Boogie Man, “We’ll take a vacation to Disney World one summer soon,” are all examples. These fibs are fun and well-meaning, but untruths nonetheless.

Don’t worry, I’m not judging. I’m all for them and participate enthusiastically.

Of the Tooth Fairy, however, I’m not a huge fan.

You shouldn’t be, either. Think about it objectively, as if it’s a new thing. The concept that a supernatural being — perhaps a tiny, sparkly woman with wings — flutters into a child’s bedroom late at night, collects a still-bloody, newly extracted tooth from directly underneath the kid’s head, and replaces it with actual spending money is just … I don’t know … weird!

Am I wrong?!

Sure, I know it’s meant to be some type of incentive to get a kid to pull his or her loose tooth, but this really doesn’t seem like a huge problem. Is there some kind of dangerous medical condition related to overly loose teeth? I don’t think so.

If there were, I would’ve contracted it as a kid. I refused to pull my teeth (or have them pulled) at all costs. I would allow my loose tooth to be hanging by the last, stubborn gum molecule, swinging in space like a tiny cowbell, before finally dropping out of my mouth from sheer exhaustion. If my mom or dad did pull my tooth, they met with the approximate resistance of a feather. Or, perhaps, air. All the nerve endings had long since died away.

The bottom line is, the tooth is eventually coming out, either with help or on its own.

But at an undetermined point in history, supposedly in Northern Europe, some fool decided we should attach money to the loss of a tooth. Clearly, this person was financially well-off, because once the process gets underway, kids lose teeth at the approximate frequency of a great white shark and the street value of useless pieces of bony calcium has skyrocketed in recent decades.

Seriously, a 2013 study by Visa found that on average, the Tooth Fairy shells out $3.70 for a tooth. We all lose 20 baby teeth, so that equates to $74 per kid.

When Pete, my 11-year-old, finishes losing teeth, Holly and I will have paid around $222 for three kids-worth of teeth. TEETH! Not even good ones!

(Actually, it would be more like $250 due to that time when the Tooth Fairy kept forgetting to hit the ATM and didn’t visit Pete for a full week after he lost a tooth. As a gesture of good customer service and to account for interest and inflation, she finally dropped a cool 20-spot.)

So let’s just say, for argument’s sake, that the money part was a good idea. Why was it necessary to add a nondescript fairy to the mix? And why wasn’t this being given a standard physical description? Think about it. Everybody knows what Santa looks like, but the Tooth Fairy could be anything. Sure, most people think Tinkerbell, but in “The Making of an Icon: The Tooth Fairy in North American Folklore and Popular Culture,” Rosemary Wells writes that mythical being has also been depicted as “a child with wings, a pixie, a dragon, a blue mother-figure, a flying ballerina, two little old men, a dental hygienist, a potbellied flying man smoking a cigar, a bat, a bear, and others.”

Read that again carefully. Somewhere, at some time, a kid has laid in the darkness, eyes like saucers, expecting a bat, a bear, or a potbellied flying man with a stogie to sneak into their room at any second.

As if that isn’t freaky enough, there is the process of you, The Parent, actually “being” the Tooth Fairy. This involves staying up late enough to ensure the kid is sound asleep, creeping into his or her room without the benefit of night-vision goggles, reaching under the pillow upon which the head is resting, pulling out the clumsily folded washcloth containing the tooth, making the exchange, and replacing the whole thing.

There are several issues at play here. First, the kid always seems to place the washcloth exactly under his or her head — which alone weighs approximately 200 pounds — rather than at the edge of the pillow, where the Tooth Fairy can easily get to it.

Second, if you don’t have available paper money, you have to resort to a pile of change, which is like trying to stuff a tambourine or a container of Tic-Tacs under the pillow without making noise.

Third, there are inevitably all kinds of items and toys strewn across the floor, making the room a darkened landmine of noise-making items waiting to be stepped on.

This all adds up to one thing: lifelong post-traumatic stress syndrome for the Tooth Fairy. With every lost chicklet, it’s like a combination of the board game “Operation,” a sequence from “Mission Impossible,” and first-degree burglary. Hanging in the balance is your child’s total belief and trust in you as a parent.

Over a tooth.

The entire process is so stressful, I recently negotiated with my wife to trade jobs: If she’ll henceforth be the Tooth Fairy, I’ll henceforth clean up all instances of vomit.  That’s how bad I hate it.

Can’t we all just agree to dispense with the Tooth Fairy and, from now on, just write the kid a check from $3.70 in the light of day?

Oh, I’m just kidding. Never let it be said that I would ruin a fun childhood tradition.

I may get coal in my stocking.

 

Got funny Tooth Fairy stories? I’d love to hear them! Post them in the comments.